The Point of Death (6 page)

'There
are dark alleys enough up in Holborn, I suppose, well without London Wall, but we cannot risk it. He cannot go anywhere he might be found,' said Henslowe at once. 'All the world knows he played with us today. If he is found dead tonight then the Bishop's Bailiff will be at our door tomorrow. Though in God's truth he lived convenient enough to the Fleet River, nearer there than Southampton House.'

'That's
your neck of the woods, Will,' said Dick Burbage. 'My Lord of Southampton's your patron. Perhaps he was funding Morton too.'

'I
never saw him at Southampton House nor down in the country,' said Will dismissively. 'Half the bright young men in London live along High Holborn, for it's close to the Inns of Court for preferment and the mercury baths for the pox.'

'Danby,
or Rackmaster Topcliffe, or the Bishop's Bailiff,' said Ned Alleyn, bringing them back to the matter in hand. 'Depending on whose jurisdiction the guts are washed up in.'

'Then
we must put him where he will never be found - or hide him until our investigation is complete,' said Tom.

'And
our run is finished and our future's secure,' added Burbage and Henslowe together.

'Where
is the nearest graveyard?' asked Will.

'Behind
St Mary Overie Church hard by the bridge,' answered Henslowe who knew the South Bank well - particularly as he owned so much of it.

'There
are new-made graves there, I'll be bound,' said Will. 'We could add to their number tonight.'

'There's
a risk,' warned Hemminge, the churchwarden. 'If you played such a trick at my church at St Mary Aldermanbury, the sexton would be on your heels fast enough. And the authorities would be called in by the week's end.'

'Then,'
said Tom grimly, 'we'd best stow him where the recording's not so nice. Where's the nearest plague pit?'

Again
it was Henslowe who answered most readily - too readily, for he did not immediately see where the question was leading. 'There's a new pit out beyond the Paris Garden, round towards Lambeth Palace,' he said. 'It's but poorly closed off. I fear the authorities are expecting to reopen it soon enough.'

'Is
it well guarded?' wondered Tom.

'A
couple of boys and a dog o' Sundays.'

Henslowe
shrugged dismissively. 'Who'd be mad enough to break in there?'

'Who
indeed?' asked Tom, glancing across at Will and Ugo.

Chapter Nine - Bull Pit and Plague Pit

The company broke up just before ten. Those careful of their pennies wanted to be free to cross the Bridge before the City Gates closed; those like Hemminge and Condell more careful of their souls and reputations, wanted to be free of the Bank side before all Hell was let loose. But in truth there was little to keep them. All the plans they could make were laid and wanted nothing but action. From tomorrow they would be putting on a second performance between five and seven - giving patrons an unrivalled opportunity to spend the early afternoon at Master Henslowe's baiting pits, the early evening in his playhouse and the night in his taverns and brothels close by.

As
full darkness came and Bow Bells echoed distantly, chiming their nightly ten o'clock peal, Tom, Ugo and Will followed Henslowe himself out into Rose Alley. Between them, Tom and Ugo pulled the small cart favoured by the Wardrobe Master, piled with old rags of long-faded finery. Its ancient wheels creaked and its axle shuddered as they pulled it out into the street which was little more than a path worn in the grass and a little bridge over a stream. As though its venerable frame found the weight of these piled scraps of tawdry far heavier than usual, it continued to com plain. A link boy waited to guide the busy entrepreneur to whichever of his adventures he wished to visit next. 'Bull Pit,' he ordered gruffly. The four of them slopped through the muddy pathways with the puddle of golden light appearing to brighten and dim in opposition to the light around them, which varied in turn, according to the vagaries of the moon behind the last of the fleeing storm clouds. The axle of the ancient cart squeaked and howled as the notion took it. Maid Lane wound between the half-open fields behind the Bankside tenements and the great places of entertainment. To the south of the Lane lay the Winchester Park, running up to Winchester Palace itself, London domicile of the Bishop who owned most of the land between here and Lambeth and whose Law ran south of the Thames. Almost before the last echo of Bow Bells died, their ears were assaulted by the howling of the dogs Henslowe kept kennelled in the gardens behind both the Bear Pit and the Bull Pit. Right into Bear Gardens they turned then left through a little cut to the Bull Pit itself.

The
Gatherer guarded the door still, though the last bull of the day had long since gone screaming down to death. He let the four of them into the great woodenwalled space, not so very different in design from the Rose. But whereas the walls of the theatre were decorated with gilding and paint, here they were spattered with blood and offal. There the air reeked of ground lings and - occasionally - Master Henslowe's beloved gunpowder effects. Here it stank of odour and death. And not a little lust.

Round
the walled 'O' of the pit itself, with its central pole and scratched, splintered walls they scurried, pulling the Wardrobe Master's protesting cart into what would have been the tiring room if this had been a theatre. This room was, literally, a shambles. Four bulls hung from a great gantry, ready to be wherried across the river first thing in the morning to be butchered and sold at the City Shambles hard behind St Paul's where Cheapside met Paternoster Row. The bulls' faces were largely gone, their throats, chests, legs, bellies and privities ripped to pieces. And, beside them, stood a cart more than twice the size of that between Tom and Ugo. This cart was strong, new, well maintained, its axle well-greased and solid. It needed to be strong, for it was piled high with dead dogs. From every crack and fissure along its high-boarded sides ran rivulets of thick, dark blood to gather on the axle and grease the wheels before it gathered thickly on the ground.

Henslowe
gestured and the Gatherer left them alone. Tom heaved the Wardrobe Master's finery aside to reveal Julius Morton, blue and stiffening by now, his face a bloodless, waxen mask with wide eyes and an all but lipless gape. Henslowe himself caught the corpse's heels as Tom took the shoulders and together they swung him on to the dog cart. Then, careful to avoid the gathering blood, Tom hurled over a length of rope and several solid iron carpenter's instruments to lie on the dead man's chest. Will and Ugo put their clothing at greater risk by pulling dead dogs from beneath him to pile up atop him, until the corpse - and the pile of tools it carried - was completely hidden. 'You know what to do,' said Master Henslowe. 'Then, Master Shakespeare, I would most warmly commend you to your bed. You'll be doubling as Mercutio tomorrow and twice a day after that until we can train up another man. Here ...' He reached into the bag the Gatherer had left and pulled out a handful of pennies. 'Take a wherry from Stangate Stairs or Horseferry hard by the palace.'

'Stangate Stairs to Fresh Wharf,' said Will as they pushed the heavy but silent cart out into the moonstruck night. 'Please God it is slack water or we'll never shoot the Bridge.' 'It's still a fair walk from up to your lodgings at St Helen's,' added Tom. 'You'd best walk light and careful, Will. Either that or bed down at the Boar's Head. Henslowe gave you enough for a bawd, let alone a boat.'

Will
fell silent at that and Tom smiled. The Boar's Head Tavern was part of Henslowe's empire. The women who worked there were a cut above the rest, except for the girls at the Elephant, which Tom himself preferred. Will had a good deal to think about. As had they all.

Speed
and logic dictated that they should be wheeling their doubly grim burden along Bankside and into Upper Ground - thence along the South Bank to Lambeth Palace, whither they were ultimately bound. Although the Scavenger had an agreement with Henslowe - a mutually rewarding one - for the disposal of dead dogs and occasional offal, every now and then a larger assignment of canine meat would be sent directly to Lambeth Palace to be fed to the Archbishop of Canterbury's pack of hounds. Should anyone demand an explanation tonight, this was the one they were prepared to give.

But
of course their real objective was the old plague pit which lay in the !Zing's Field, hard by the Scavenger's own Laystall or rubbish pile. The moonlight led them along Maid Lane to Gravel Lane and there they turned south, running down below the bawdy brightness of the Paris Garden towards Sunmer Street. No sooner had they turned south than Tom began to suspect they were being followed.

Will
seemed to have no such worries, however. If he had done so he would have stayed quiet, straining like Tom to catch any suspect rustle, whisper or footfall in the moon shadows at their heels. Instead, he fell into a low, muttered conversation about what the meeting of the Rose's company had agreed before they broke up into the gathering night. As soon as Morton was hidden well away - hidden it was now agreed in some place whence he might be retrieved should circumstances so dictate -Tom was to take up his next and most personal responsibility. He was to search out the deadly ambidextrous swordsman. Not too hard a task, in all truth; for the man was like to be unique and he would inevitably flash through Tom's orbit, or that of his acquaintance, like a meteor through the night. But discovering the murderer's identity would get them little further unless they could put him in the hands of the law and get the truth of the matter racked out of him. But they would have to be careful how they did this, of course. 'We're as like to end up on Rack master Topcliffe's bed as the murderer is,' puffed Will, throwing his weight against the increasingly unwieldy cart. 'So we must present a complete picture to the Crowner's Quest. Like Robert Poley did at poor Kit Marlowe's death last year.'

'The
nearest way to do that is to go through his rooms before the authorities can, I agree,' said Tom. 'Which end of Holborn did he live? Not up by Southampton House-'

'No,'
said Will coldly. Will had spent much of the last few years on the fringes of the Earl of Southampton's circle, and had been his servant for the last eighteen months, dedicating some of his greatest poetry to his master and - some said - sharing his bed from time to time as Marlowe had sometime shared Tom Walsingham's. Will had left the young earl's household mere weeks since to rejoin the Burbages - and the recently formed Rose Company. There were whispers that Southampton, like the Earl of Leicester seven years ago, had given him a thousand pounds. But sign of such riches was there none.

'Morton's
rooms are at the east end, past the Inns, near Turnagain Lane,' said Will now, breaking Tom's chain of thought.

'Close
on Alsatia,' said Tom. 'A man of many parts, then, if he is privy to that thieves' den as well as the inns and the theatres. But not Southampton House, you say?'

'Not
while I have been there.'

'Better
known, perhaps, at Essex House, then. The two are close enough.'

'In
all but distance,' admitted Will.

'I
must across to Westminster in the morning at any rate,' continued Tom, quietly, ears a-strain for that near-silent footfall close behind, mind focused on what Will was letting slip about the relationships between the great Earls of Southampton and Essex to whom he had been so close, and the murky world of thievery and murder which clung to their cloak-tails like mud. 'I'm happy enough to talk to my Lord Strange's secretary. Even though Lord Strange is dead we still may have some call on his name and his purse. My name is on the list of the Rose's company and they know I can speak for Masters Henslowe, Burbage and the rest of you. But I am also known at Court as Master of Defence. More and more of them are making their pilgrimage out to my long room at Blackfriars. Lords of all stripe and seniority among them. Their Graces of Essex and Southampton soon enough, I daresay. And to be frank, my name is not unknown in certain corridors. The Musgraves are captains of the Bewcastle Waste. My Uncle Tom reports direct to My Lord Chamberlain and the Council.'

'Hist...'
spat Ugo. 'We are followed.'

Tom
nodded and the three of them fell silent again. They were coming close to the edge of the King's Field now. Beyond that stretched Lambeth Marsh, a sodden desert crossed by paths a little dryer than the mire.

The
King's Field was higher, a slight eminence around which the Thames wound between the twin cities of London and Westminster on the north bank and the separate conurbations of Bankside and Lambeth on the south. As the three men and the dog filled cart slowed to turn upwards along a pale path towards the Scavenger's dust heaps and the plague pits nearby, three men stepped out of the shadows, blocking their way. They held clubs and long, hook-topped poles.

'Whaddayou
want here, cully?' said the largest, the leader.

Tom
stepped forward, hand on sword-hilt, casual but ready enough. 'We're about Master Henslowe's business.'

'Oh
aye? What business be that?'

'To
carry these carrion dogs down to the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth.'

'They're
Scavenger's meat, them dogs. Scavenger's like to want them, Master Henslowe's business or no.'

'The
Scavenger'll have to take them then,' said Tom easily, and his sword whipped out into the moonlight like quicksilver.

'Hold
!
'
cried a great voice, even as the three ruffians took their first steps into battle. A light flared. Four large men stood under a flaring torch across the north-running reach of the road. The Watch did not patrol south of the river- nor in some areas north of it, Alsatia among them. Or rather the City Watch did not. These men were something else entirely. These were the Bailiff's men. As the Bishop of Winchester owned the South bank up to Lambeth Palace Walls, the officers employed by his Bailiff had jurisdiction to take down felons and lock them in his prison at the Clink. Under the aegis of the Bailiff, these men were the law south of the river. Tom, Will and Ugo knew it. The Scavenger's men knew it. 'If those dogs be bound to my Lord Archbishop,' said the leader of the watch men, 'then it is Master Henslowe's business and the Archbishop's business. It is no business for the Scavenger or his men. Go trawl your hooks through some other midden, club some of these triple-damned wildcats.'

Thus
was the law laid down.

***

Had they been concerned about any guards - or indeed any noise - the cats laid their fears speedily to rest. The Scavenger's dust heap was alive with them, hunting the rats that also infested the place, quarrelling, courting, screaming at the moon. Tom essayed some dry exercise of his wit to cover some understandable nervousness as they unloaded Julius Morton and fell to with the crowbars and jemmies from his chest. On the third repetition he gave up, his words drowned by the cacophony of the cats - even though they were several hundred yards away on the dust heaps while the three men broke open the unguarded mouth of the King's Field Plague Pit.

Under
the skirts of the departing cloud cover, the winds were light and flighty, flirting from one way, then another, to ruffle hair and stroke cheeks like the coolest fingers of the hottest bawd. But they brought with them more sensations than delicate touch. They brought with them a range of odours which would have turned the stomach of the most hardened practitioner of physicke. From the river - though it was the cleanest part of London - came the stenches of mud, effluent, putrefaction and fish - living, recently deceased, long dead, rotten and near mummified. From the dust heaps came the stench of rotting food, clothing, excrement, overlain with a burning dose of wildcat scent, excrement and urine. But this was as nothing compared to the stench which came with the opening of the first rough board across the black maw of the plague pit. Mercifully, the moon was too low to penetrate far into the hollow where the dead lay. Carefully numbered in their hundreds in each of the boroughs and parishes where they had died, carefully entered into the records by the clerks, alerted by the Searchers whose job it was to search through the bodies, looking for information, valuables and probable cause of death. But away from the parish registers, the records simply stopped. No one knew how many unnumbered hundreds or thousands of corpses mouldered down here. And none of the three living men up here was going down for a closer look. Awed, they stood and stared into the black Hell's mouth they had opened. Little brightnesses winked back at them - white, red, green. Little scuttlings and scurryings told them of things alive down there - rats at the very least. Wild cats too, for the area was overrun with them. God alone knew what else. And God was welcome to the knowledge, thought the three of them all alike.